Baskin Dim Bulb branding advertising social media business strategy

Forget About Harley and Apple

Have you noticed that most conversations about branding inevitably include references to Harley-Davidson and Apple? Sprinkle in mentions of Coke, Facebook, and Zappos, and you get the context of every agency pitch for more spending on brand engagement, loyalty, or whatever else these examples might suggest.

I suggest you ban these references from your next conversation. Forget about them altogether.

Marketing's dim science lets itself get distracted and misled by the stand-outs and exceptions. It's no surprise, since we're in the standing-out business (and think of ourselves as quite exceptional, thank you very much), but we tend to read a lot of meaning into uniquely complex accomplishments that can't be copied because of their unique complexity:

• See what Apple does? When you mimic it, you're just copying the detritus of its imagery, or producing lame mockups of its design (which is what its competitors have done, both in computers and smartphones).
• Want Harley's rabid customer loyalty? Start a company in the midwest a long time ago, cater to an exclusive niche customer, and still watch your income drop by more than four-fifths last quarter (i.e. great name but no new customers).
• Do you want to be a household name like Coke? Spend umpteen billions on every medium known to man for about 100 years.
• Facebook look like an opportunity? Find investors who will let you give stuff away for free, perhaps forever. Good luck with that.

Yet these are the very examples that we see featured in new business presentations and industry conclaves. They're visual, often fun, and speak to our desires to deliver emotions and other intangible values; brand identity is what makes what we make different from what others make. This is the guiding principle so amply (and repeatedly) illustrated by the exceptions...the stand-outs that "do it right," and which we should try to duplicate.

Only we can't, for two primary reasons:

1. Your brand can't duplicate all of the operational and contextual realities that make those brands real. You can't even know them all; what you see instead is the marketing "layer" that often trails the actions and events that accomplish the differentiating. Brand communications is a fascinating shadow play on a cave wall; the brands you are told to copy by spending marketing dollars to manipulate what people think are succeeding because they spend operational dollars impacting how people behave. Asking marketers to explain this operational reality is like asking an adolescent why an airplane can fly, and being told  "because the pilot is really, really good."
2. Even if you could know and copy the operational and contextual realities of exceptional brands, you'd fail because they’re already onto changing them. In fact, their successes should be an indication of what you shouldn't try to implement, because it was already done. Think how many brands opened retail showcase stores without any purpose, or the rapid spread of cookie-cutter promotions on Facebook. Exceptional brands do exceptional things that defy the experts' case histories and recommendations. Yet you're peddled the rehash of yesterday's news, and told that some truisms warrant your efforts at accomplishing something similar. 

And we wonder why so many marketing campaigns fail to live up to our expectations?

Scientists know that you have to take outlier data out of any experiment for risk of skewing or simply confusing the results. We see the impact of allowing political discourse to be run by extreme, absolute positions. A soprano's highest note is considered a peak and not the home of her range. You get the idea.

So why still do we try to understand brands by studying the anomalies?

Text is the New Multimedia

(NOTE: This essay draws on a chapter in my new book, Bright Lights & Dim Bulbs, which identifies nine radical branding and marketing insights for innovative business leaders to watch as we roll into 2010)

If video killed the radio star, wasn't video supposed to obliterate text?

It hasn't. Not even close. Who would have thought that 2009 would witness instead the continued resurgence of the written word?

The language was sometimes indeterminable, and the conversations often unrepeatable without a blush added to the shrug, but text has proven amazingly resilient as a communications medium. Words "work" on printed pages and mobile phone screens (i.e. cross-platform), find utility for marketing strategies old and new (you can use them to declare, or to converse), and prove convenient and adaptable for users young and old.

Think back to a few good creative communications ideas that had to be translated into imagery, and then required deconstruction by viewers. Seems like a long way to go to make a statement, doesn't it? I'm all for a funny clip, and it's very true that a picture can tell a thousand words...but most of the time, 99% of those words get misused, misinterpreted, or outright ignored.

For something so immediate and compelling, you couldn't find a medium better able to substitute the simulacra of a connection for the transfer of actual content or meaning.

As opposed to video, text is a "hot medium," if you buy into Marshall McLuhan's theories about media (and I do, for the most part). Even when viewed online, words engage a single sense, and thereby establish a direct connection that is richer in specific information and meaning than more participatory, or "cool" multimedia experiences.

When we're blown away by a video, we translate it into words to label our reactions, code our memories, and subsequently share our thoughts. Even reduced to tweets and abbreviations, text remains the most facile communications engine available to us, only you wouldn't know it from all of the media excitement and agency sales efforts to tell us otherwise. 

Worse, it's not just that companies have been misled by the lure of the moving image; 2009 has been a banner year for slogans and gibberish in business communications, from nonsense adjectives in press releases, to incomprehensible statements about branding. Companies spent time orchestrating faux conversations instead of contributing to real ones; corporate strategies were described in blatheriffic doublespeak; popular phrases, like "innovation," were used to obfuscate the purposes of new management teams, as well as new products. 

Why do businesses use words so poorly?

Maybe because words seem free when compared with the cost of producing a video or sound file. Perhaps because social media conversations are so fast and frequent that specific word choices seem less important. One of my pet peeves is that we still use words to satisfy ourselves; we talk to our aspirations for our brands, and not to make those direct connections to readers.

I think the year proved that what companies say matters, whether as the inputs into social media, or as the tool by which they make those direct connections with their consumers. But it has to be accurate, honest, and credible. It's harder to get away with a lie when it's literally spelled out; conversely, if we use words to state truths (and avoid all of the nuances that distract or lessen them), then text is a powerful tool that transports across technology platforms, and works with all age groups.

I believe that 2010 will give us great and useful opportunities to use video and other media to communicate with our customers, but I suggest that there’ll be even more, better, easier, and more cost-effective chances to wring more impact and value out of the lowly, simple, written word.

The Bulb Asks:

• Do your press releases need so many adjectives? Is your product really “world class,” and what does that mean, anyway?
• Are you telling your social networks things that really matter, not just what your brand lexicon might dictate?
• Will your next communication tell something meaningful, relevant and useful, or will you expect your customers to decipher something? Think less secret code, and more direct statement.

(Bright Lights & Dim Bulbs contains 10 tips on this topic and 8 others)

Send Teenagers Into Space

No, I'm not being a grumpy parent. A nonprofit organization hopes to send as many as 200 teachers into space each year aboard private rockets. I think we should launch teenagers there instead.

I understand the argument for teachers: there are educators who genuinely think space exploration is cool, and want to use it to encourage their students to study science. Boosters of manned missions see education as a leverage point for recruiting future boosters. NASA itself pursued the idea up until Christa McAuliffe was killed in the Challenger explosion in 1986.

"We believe that space should be for everyone" explained the program manager for Teachers In Space, "and what better group of people to demonstrate that than teachers."

Only it's not for everyone. There's a good case to be made that it's not for human beings at all.

Outer space is an incomprehensibly dangerous place. Nowhere else are people more threatened by circumstances and less likely to survive mishaps. The exploration business makes amateur mountain peak climbing seem tame, if not outright boring. And safe. Sending teachers into this environment makes about as much sense as sending them into combat.

There's a lot that could be done to better promote space exploration, and it has everything to do with adventure.

Back in the 18th Century, scientists tagged along on merchant routes and military expeditions. Much of what they discovered or studied wasn't the stuff of high drama -- cataloging beetle species and weather measurements were no more awe-inspiring than they would be now -- but the journeys themselves were full it it. These scientists were explorers, and they were celebrated for their fearlessness (unless, of course, they got killed along the way, which happened quite regularly). It helped that they were really, really young (by our standards of life expectancy). 

Collecting flower and plant seeds might sound dull, but doing it a gazillion miles away from civilization and home, and doing so without any backup, was the stuff of legend.

Teachers are just too obviously symbols on their rides into space, even if they participate in some study of their sleeping habits (or something) up there. They're tourists, and that doesn't teach anybody much of anything. We need to capture that citizen scientist and adventurer spirit of exploration in centuries past, and I think the way we could do it is by launching teenagers instead.

Think about it: your average teen today has more education than many adults could have even imagined a generation ago, not to mention more technology at her or his fingertips than was used by NASA since its founding. How about creating engaging, risky, utterly rocking projects for them to pull off, and then hooking them up to enough real-time social media so they can share their every burp with their followers?  Why not create tasks that only teenagers could do? You could include them in the development and prep for future launches. Make space exploration the realm of the very few, the very talented, and the most adventurous of every new generation.

Outer space isn't a museum in need of a docent, it's a rough-and-tumble abyss full of unimaginable risks. Who better than teenagers to ignore those facts and really engage in the experience...and, in doing so, provide the real catalyst for getting the rest of us to pay attention again?

Ads Aren't Augmented Reality

Does advertising need augmented reality?

Augmented Reality, or "AR," is one of the ideas buzzing around the advertising world these days. The premise is that consumers don't want to look at static ads any longer, so there are various ways to augment them with technology that makes them move, speak, or appear in 3-D. Unlike passive advertising, AR embeds interactivity that lets people engage with marketing content.

Cool. Only that's not AR. It's just a fancy name for creating ads for the sake of creating ads. The industry would do well to avoid pursuing the sham.

AR is a real thing; fighter pilots have been experiencing it for years via something called a "heads up display" that beams relevant readings and info on their cockpit windows (or onto their visors). The information augments their experience of reality. A GPS device guiding your car around a traffic jam is AR. Similarly, you could argue that any device or medium that adds content in real-time -- like Twitter, or even a mobile phone call -- adds a dimension that wasn't otherwise there.

The more seamless the integration, of course, the more real the augmenting goes. You don't need to read sci-fi to imagine walking through an apparel store and seeing cost of production, number of returns, and other pertinent information displayed over a stack of sweaters, or some aggregated VU-like personality rating meter floating next to strangers at a party. Wear glasses, lenses on your eyes, or have a chip implanted in your brain. AR is real, it's really cool, and it's the future.

But it's a far cry from a multimedia ad.

If anything, AR represents an opportunity to incorporate marketing communications -- or, more broadly, publishing content -- into consumers' lives. The key would be to refocus away from trying to be funny or distracting, and instead contribute to experience.  So Neutrogena could partner with Ray-Ban to sell sunglasses that measured UV radiation and advised on time spent in the sun. A restaurant could update a real-time list of favorite menu items, or post preparation times. An iPhone app called Bionic Eye purports do add content over a real-time view of your surroundings, though the layer is filled with nonsense advertising (it's the right thought, though).

The solutions could be simple or complicated, relying on existing technology or prompting invention. But you don't need special glasses to see that true AR-driven solutions won't look like advertising.

The Bulb Asks:

• Are you spending money trying to get your ads to be more engaging instead of your brand?
• Could you help improve your consumers' experience with something your business knows?  How might you share it with them in a meaningful way?
• If you didn't feel the need to "fix" your ads, or use the ad model to communicate with your consumers, what would you come up with?

Ford Keeps A Secret

Ford's latest spots for its Lincoln MKS and EcoBoost engine continues the company's steadfast commitment to advertising that ensures nobody understands what it's selling. It's not only that I don't like the campaign, but I honestly don't understand it.

The Lincoln MKS sorta kinda looks like most other sedans, perhaps even luxuriously so. The ad makes this fact very plain, and does so in a very plain, generic, this-is-what-car-companies-do sort of way. Flashback to a couple of years ago and you'd see the same garbage: quick cuts of car exteriors and interiors interspersed with the vehicle speeding down (a. urban street, b. long, winding mountain road, and/or c. spinning or sliding to a stop). The commercial could have been made in the 1970s for all it shares in terms of unique content or relevant messaging.

I thought car makers would have realized by now that these sheet metal love paeans do nothing except mollify dealers who shouldn't be dictating advertising creative, and put money into the pockets of ad creatives who make a living mollifying dealers. $6 billion spent by Detroit last year proved the point that doing the same thing over and over again doesn't sell cars.

And there's the rub, because Ford isn't doing the same thing, at least not operationally. The EcoBoost engine is a cool, unique innovation, and the company is pulling a Wal-Mart by standardizing an environmentally-friendly product vs. making some symbolic green gesture and hyping the hell out of it. The engine gets 20% better fuel economy and generates 15% fewer CO2 emissions and, like Wal-Mart committing to putting affordable fluorescent bulbs on its store shelves, Ford is going to put it into a half million of its vehicles over the next 5 years.

This is a real, meaningful step, yet Ford seems to be going out of its way to keep it a secret. Instead, its branding is a broken record, going so far as to repurpose the 70s song "Don't Fear The Reaper." I don't know about you, but about the only thing this TV spot does is make me want more cowbell.

I can imagine the logic that drove the strategy, though, and I suspect it relied on two false assumptions: first, that automotive branding is still all about imaginary aspirations, desires and ego. Those emotions are key drivers of sales, but the way brands get to them -- whether for cars or anything else -- is based on meaning, relevance and utility, and not so much on the traditional artifice of branding. Sexy is still sexy, but you get it by doing sexy things, not declaring them. The Lincoln MKS spots show me stuff but tell me absolutely nothing that matters.

Could the EcoBoost have been used as a key differentiator? Is it possible to make green sexy? It would have been a harder challenge than regurgitating old car imagery, but perhaps it could have yielded a better campaign.

Second, I suspect that the brand gurus still equate exposure to marketing messages -- whether defined as eyeballs in front of a TV screen, or time spent chatting through a social media campaign -- as the same thing as consumption, internalization, and subsequent use.

It's not.

Consumers aren't looking for relationships with brands today, but rather hoping that brands will deliver the meaning, relevance, and utility that all the blather that brands promise to deliver. The wait time for that fulfillment is a nanosecond.  Further, the medium really isn't the message (it never was, at least wholly), though the metrics used to measure most of the activities Ford and other companies are using to replace old-fashioned media tracking seem to claim otherwise. The message is the message, which means it needs to be clear, memorable, and useful (whether it's funny, shocking, or award-winning is a means to an end). A forwarded video that is only entertaining is still only entertaining; no brand can own funny or sexy. Successful brands don't promise, they deliver. Now.

The EcoBoost engine seems to me to be a real opportunity for Ford to get consumers closer to its business and the reality of car purchase, yet it choose to use its broadcast ad buy to do the exact opposite. I'm not aware that its using social media to do anything more than get consumers chatting about their chatter. 

The company needs less distraction and obfuscation. Its new engine, and the fact that it wants to sell cars, shouldn't be kept secret.

Still Time To Learn Greek

Is it possible your deepest brand values are the ones you need to change?

In reading a review of a biography of journalist and professional dissenter I. F. Stone, I noticed a brief mention that he'd taught himself Greek late in life, and even written a book about Socrates. This jiggled loose a rusty switch in my memory: Edmund Wilson, another essayist (and hero of mine), had also chosen to learn Greek shortly before his death. His goal was to read the Bible in something close to its original tongue.

I find the gesture deeply inspiring.

Both guys were debilitated by ill-health and could have easily chosen to be angry and bored. It's what most people do, and many do it much sooner than the infirmities and indignities of aging might warrant.

The Human Condition is grossly unfair because, ultimately, it's a brief walk that ends in a catastrophe, and its latter parts usually come with the death of friends, various bodily ailments, and a realization that whatever you've accomplished along the way will inevitably turn to dust. You don't get to stick around and argue otherwise.

Wilson and Stone were no great paragons of goodness; one was a serious drinker obsessed with sex, and the other a prickly sort who may well have spied on America for the Soviets. We could debate the merits of their reporting and scholarship, though I'd argue pretty hard that Wilson's book "To The Finland Station" should be required reading for anybody who wants to understand the lure of utopian societies (and why they repeatedly fail).

But both men refused to give up. When the world wouldn't have required or expected anything from them, they decided to improve their own minds. They chose to stay engaged, to challenge themselves, and make sure that what they did tomorrow wasn’t just a recollection of what they’d did yesterday. They chose reinvention over nostalgia.

It doesn't really matter to me how they did it, per se. Ancient Greek has no inherent value in my book, and I'm not sure their last works were necessarily important or even altogether insightful. I'm simply impressed that they did it, instead of electing to watch sports, torture their families, or whatever else people do when they aren’t inspired to do much of anything at all. I feel the same way about George H.W. Bush, who insists on jumping out of airplanes to commemorate his birthdays since turning 80.

There's a lesson here, right?  All of us still have time to learn Greek.

The Bulb Asks:

• Do you think it's too late (or costly) to reinvent your brand?
• Are the qualities you rely upon for your brand values really strengths or assumptions?
• What would be the hardest thing to change about how you got to market...and might it be the best thing you could do?

It's Just Sugar Water, Stupid

Coca-Cola's old school propaganda on the beverage tax is an insult and a missed opportunity.

A full bore campaign to defeat a possible tax on sugary drinks is underway (the tax has been proposed as a possible source of revenue to support health care reform):

• The lobbying group calling itself "Americans Against Food Taxes" is running a TV spot called "Pennies" that claims a few cents' tax on the gallons of soda pop a family is obligated to buy would put undo hardship on its finances
• The trade media is claiming that a tax intended to curtail consumption "...would create serious problems and potentially impact sales for the American beverage industry"
• Coca-Cola's CEO reportedly said that the proposal was "outrageous," and that if the government could tell people what to eat and drink, "...the Soviet Union would still be around." Its full-page newspaper ads declare that "Americans are realizing the importance of living a balanced, healthy lifestyle," which is supported by the calorie counts on its labels, a smaller can size, and some sort of guidelines Coke helped bring to schools. The web site promoting these things is gloriously ill-named, over-produced, and devoid of meaningful content

Ruminations of Food Totalitarianism aside, there are two simple, underlying truths that make the anti-tax campaign not only disingenuous, but hollow:

1. We're talking about soda pop, not guns or nicotine
2. Coke wants us to drink as much as possible, as it should

Wouldn't common sense have been far a more authentic basis for the industry's counter-attack? Coke isn't food, it's not good for you, and it isn't part of a healthy diet any more than waking up is part of a good night's sleep. But it's not a hazardous substance, either; it's sugar water and, like just about anything, it's dangerous when idiots consume it in large quantities. Holding soda pop accountable for obesity is like accusing gum of causing jaw damage because some people chew too hard.

Imagine "Are You Serious?" as the headline for a newspaper ad, and the theme woven through social media -- a contest for people to nominate other inane things to regulate or tax, for instance -- and comments by Coke execs that let us know that they know that the tax proposal is silly.

The reason why I think this approach would be more authentic (whether I'd support it or not isn't the point) is that it wouldn't crash into Coke's basic desire for all of us to drink our fool heads off:

• Drive-thru cups are sized for giants
• Restaurants push free refills
• Store bottles are so large they don't fit in some refrigerators
• Fast-food straws are wide enough to amplify sound

Its entire business model depends on people viewing Coke as something akin to water coming out of a faucet. Drink Coke, as one of its taglines goes, so to claim separately that its goal is something else just doesn't jibe with the operational reality of its business. None of the promises of molecule-sized cans or consumption guidelines changes this fact; worse, I'd argue that its anti-tax campaign denies these facts, in the same way that the oil companies try to duck the fact that they make money from pumping gunk out of the ground and selling it to us as often as we want it.

And, like the oil companies, the false bravado of Coke's campaign amounts to cognitive dissonance that comes across like they know that they're guilty of something.  

There's some proof that support for the tax is waning, but nobody can make the case that the campaign was responsible. Even it the effort is helping, I still question what this sort of old school propagandizing does to Coke's brand, and whether it could have been pursued in a way that was authentic and supportive of it.

I would have recommended that the company focus on an approach that was based on telling a simple fact, whether to consumers of its propaganda, or of its drinks:

It's just sugar water, stupid.

Managing Expectations

Did you miss the NASA rocket crash into the Moon on live television Friday morning? Don't worry, you didn't miss anything. Nothing happened.

It was totally cool from a conceptual standpoint: a rocket had been put into orbit around the Moon over three months ago and, at the click of a button, it was directed headfirst into a crater near the South Pole. A spacecraft named LCROSS was sent right behind it, ready to measure the billowing plume of gunk that the crashed rocket would throw into space, before itself crashing into the Moon's surface. The primary goal was to determine if there's water buried under the surface; it's an early part of something called the Constellation program, which will use moon bases to launch manned missions to Mars.

The animated versions of the crashes looked like video game combat. You could just imagine the kapow!, even though there's no sound in the vacuum of space. Classrooms around the country tuned in. People made a party of it and spent the night prior outside, ready to catch the impact on their telescopes. TV stations carried the moment of impact live, as I caught it on MSNBC.

Nothing happened.

There was this "3, 2,1..." thing and then silence. I could hear the scientists congratulating themselves, and then we saw some nerds in a small room smile and miss high-fives with one another (the setting was a far cry from the bridge of the starship Enterprise, let alone mission control for the Apollo missions). The TV hosts awkwardly transitioned back to regular programming. Kids went back to their books.

It was only after the fact that experts commented that the collision happened, and that it was a success. Telemetry (or whatever) needs to get crunched (or whatever), but those in the know were thrilled with the mission. The problem is that they weren't the target audience.

It was a yawn for the rest of us. Worse, it was a disappointment. Tell me that NASA didn't recognize the possibility that there'd be no awe-inspiring, visible explosion?

You wouldn't know it from the lead-up to the event, though. Between the animation and hype, you'd think NASA fully expected fireworks. I can understand its desire to hope for a big event. It repeatedly tries, and fails, to make space exploration more engaging.  I'm a committed supporter of manned space exploration, and it bugs me constantly that the agency promotes itself through boring, inert "gee, the wonder" educational nonsense a la a Carl Sagan special on public television, and not in the fast, easy to grasp, and engaging language and imagery familiar to people under the age of 65.

Throwing a bomb at the moon was exactly that sort of thing that would get people to look up from their smartphones and take notice. I think it would have been more exciting is NASA had promoted the idea that it didn't know what would happen.  

Instead of promising a big boom, how about getting folks engaged in conversation about, and then experience of, a true unknown? There could have been votes for whether or not there'd be a plume. Kids could have submitted ideas of what the explosion would have sounded like, were there sound. Nobody would have been expecting anything in particular to happen on Friday, which means there would have been a lot less disappointment when nothing happened at all.

I commend NASA for doing something other than acting like the boring, short-sighted government agency that it is. But it did a crappy job of managing expectations for what could have been a really cool event. 

The Bulb Asks:

• Do you spend the most marketing time focused on managing customer expectations, or making promises?
• Is one person's disappointment really a risk to the perceptions of a larger audience?
• Would it make more sense to talk about brands as 'narration' instead of 'promise?'

The Permanent Sale

Jos. A. Bank is running a big sale this weekend. Wait a minute, it seems that it runs a big sale every weekend. Buy one, get two free. 50% off all merchandise. There are endless permutations of the deal, but they all center on putting the store pretty much in permanent fire sale status.

I think any self-respecting brand expert would say that this is a dumb way to run a business, let alone build a reputation. The serial sale messaging blows up any claim to value beyond the immediate discount, doesn't it?

Yet the company reports that its latest quarter sales grew 10%, earnings increased 40%, and the stock price is approaching highs it hasn't seen since 2004.

We should all be so stupid.

I'm not aware that Jos. A. Bank has ever spent much time or money building its brand; to me, the store was always a Brooks Brothers knock-off, perhaps even diluting the preppy establishment thing to something pretty generic. It was the alternative store, defined by its upscale competitors, long before Men's Wearhouse, Target, or Kohl's figured out that shoppers would want to find "the look" without "the price."

It spent its time perfecting the art of getting people into its stores, and onto its web site. And getting money out of their wallets.

The business of doing this business isn't sexy, and there's little room for the moody, aspirational advertising that consumes the budgets of most other apparel retailers. There's no humor or other associative benefit attached to the brand, and I don't think the company would know a social media campaign if it fell on its CEO's head. The products are absolutely and unequivocally boring corporate wear...no interpretations, insights, or newness of design. You can't even find a flat-fronted pair of suit pants.

Which means Jos. A. Bank knows exactly what its selling, and who is doing the buying.

I've long maintained that sales and profits should be the only real measure of brand equity, not something that marketers note with an acknowledging shrug as they wax poetic about all the ephemeral things that matter before, instead of, and apart from that reality. The immediacy of sales as proof of a thriving brand is no more evident than in retailing; what's a brand worth if it's not selling stuff to customers this week, or next?

I couldn't tell you what Jos. A. Bank stands for, and I don't care. It's the brand that successfully sells generic classicISH clothing while every other business in its category is worried it can't make payroll doing the retail thing so much, er, better.  

Maybe the idea of a permanent sale isn’t so dumb after all?

The Bulb Asks:

• Is there a gap between what your customers think about your brand, and the activators of their purchase intent?  
• How much of your outbound communications is focused on prompting actions vs. educating or informing?
• Is the "permanent sale" unsustainable, or could Jos. A. Bank do it indefinitely?

Your Room Isn't Ready Yet

Sheraton is giving away free nights in dozens of its locations as part of a campaign to promote the $6 billion it has spent on renovations. It's a missed opportunity to do more for its brand and business.

Staying at a Sheraton has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. I don't know if the differences in facilities are due to uneven franchisees and/or poor central management, but I can attest from personal experience that some Sheratons have been shockingly terrible, and others have qualified as just stunningly OK. An overhaul has been long overdue, and it's a really good thing.

But the project is incomplete; less than half of the hotel's locations have been updated. I understand the chain's desire to promote what its chief brand guru calls "a new beginning for the brand," but it's putting the rooms before the proverbial construction crews. I wonder how many people will presume that all of the rooms have been repaired due to the promotion, and then learn upon check-in that they were wrong? 

And let's see if I get the value proposition correct: it plans to give away the newly-updated rooms, and charge regular prices for the crappy ones. Isn't that bass-ackwards? I would have considered:

• Promote process, not accomplishments. Why couldn't Sheraton be the hotel chain that is always being refreshed? Staying current is an ongoing effort, by definition, so imagine if the campaign didn't try to prompt guest experiences on a particular day (the promotion is giving away 2,100 rooms, all on October 23), and instead created reasons to visit the hotels all the time?
• Involve people with more than a giveaway. Sampling is a great tool and I'm all for it, but it dares visitors to draw contrasts between what's been improved and what's not. Why not build this content into the campaign itself, so maybe ask visitors to suggest improvements, or visit older rooms for lower prices, etc.? 
• Establish a brand "reset." If this month is truly a new beginning of the brand, shouldn't every Sheraton frequent guest program participant have some stake in the relaunch? You'd they they'd get the free nights first, not net-new strangers to the brand, since they've earned it through their willingness to stay in the old rooms. How about finding some meter that starts at zero and bestows new awards to all visitors?

Again, credit to Sheraton for putting its money where its brand is...in the quality of its rooms. But such a commitment deserves a more thoughtful and sustainable communications strategy. Its rooms aren't ready yet.